Checkup: Health news in brief

Published 4:14 pm, Friday, October 12, 2012

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Subway's Jared will lead Heart Walk

Jared Fogle, the Subway spokesman who slimmed down eating subs, will join thousands of walkers taking part in the American Heart Association's North Country Heart Walk on Saturday, Oct. 20, at the Saratoga Race Course.

Registration for the Heart Association fundraiser begins at 9:30 a.m. Sponsor activities, a ceremony and opening remarks from Jared will be followed by the 1- or 3-mile walk at 10:45 a.m.

Activities include breakfast, a Kids Zone, health screenings and education, lunch from Subway, music by singer-songwriter Chelsea Cavanaugh and a tribute to survivors.

Eleven-year-old Kora Austin, born with a heart defect and now healthy, will serve as junior ambassador.

Chances are your medicine cabinet contains some pills that are past their expiration date, but you can't seem to throw them away because you suspect they might still be OK to take.

If you've wondered whether medicines really do need to be tossed after their expiration date, you've got some company. Researchers decided to satisfy their curiosity by testing the effectiveness of eight drugs that had been sitting around, unopened, in pharmacies for years after they had supposedly gone bad. These drugs were not just a few years past their prime, these medications were a full 28 to 40 years past their official expiration dates.

Out of the 14 active ingredients, 12 were still at high enough concentration — 90 percent of the amount stated on the label — to qualify as having "acceptable potency," the researchers found. These included acetaminophen, codeine, hydrocodone and caffeine. Aspirin and the stimulant amphetamine missed that cutoff.

"Our results support the effectiveness of broadly extending expiration dates for many drugs," the research team wrote.

The analysis was published online Monday by Archives of Internal Medicine.

Taken separately, the studies missed their main goals to significantly slow the mind-robbing disease. But pooled results found 34 percent less decline in mild Alzheimer's patients compared to those on a dummy treatment for 18 months.

Doctors say the results do not seem strong enough to win approval of the drug now. But they show researchers are on the right track by trying to clear the sticky deposits that clog patients' brains.